Brooklyn Rider: Starlighter – Music to sit up and take notice of

The Syrian clarinettist Kinan Azmeh joins the formidable force of Brooklyn Rider, along with Mathias Kunzli, the Swiss percussionist (and Regina Spektor’s drummer), for this intriguing interstitching of world and chamber music.

Brooklyn Rider have form as inventive collaborators, and their work with Martin Hayes underscored the sense of adventure that’s at the heart of their musical identity.

Azmeh’s clarinet traces filigree patterns through the strings on the opening triptych, In the Element, a mood-shifting meditation on the way external worlds inform and shape our internal one: elements colouring elements, layer upon layer. Brooklyn Rider’s Colin Jacobsen contributes the title track, a flinty evocation of the role of light in photosynthesis that is an homage to his father-in-law’s academic research.

Dabke on Martense Street is an initially tentative and ultimately free-spirited fantasy composed by Azmeh during the first lockdown of 2020, the title borrowed from a street in his Damascus home. Guest composer Ljova contributes one piece, Everything Everywhere Is Falling, Kunzli’s percussion perfectly punctuating its deliciously klezmer-coloured patterns.

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Starlighter is a thoughtful and deeply felt collection that reaches boldly beyond its chamber-music roots into the unfettered territory of world music, at times echoing the depth charge of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. This is music to sit up and take notice of, its many hairpin bends inviting the listener on an odyssey that’s celebratory and childlike, mournful and reflective in turn.